How popular is the warrior+shaman team? Is there any finesse to this setup or is it simply bumrush the other team with BL+WF and hope they die before you do?

Assuming it is a well played shaman and warrior it seems like there would be a lot of finesse possible with the team setup. The shaman can go as a heavy healer, or elemental shaman + mediocre healer, or an enhancement shaman + backup healer.

In all cases, you can assume the shaman will have grounding totem, tremor totem, and windfury totem as needed in addition to being able to purge down any enemy buffs.

A priest normally can rage starve a warrior by keeping up shields constantly, with a shaman partner this isn't an issue as it can be purged down.

I think a gnome warrior would make the best partner to a shaman in this situation since they aren't as snare/root susceptible and would be lacking the luxury of the blessing of freedom a paladin partner would provide.

While I haven't had a shaman partner on my gnome warrior yet, it would seem like the shaman/warrior combo would be able to kite a warrior/pally combo's warrior quite easily, since the shaman can purge down the paladin blessings and the gnome warrior can keep a hamstring on the enemy warrior (or the shaman can have some earthbind totems out). Also having played my paladin and warlock in arena, I have to say that nothing is more annoying than being earth shocked every 6 seconds as I try to cast a spell. With pummel on a 10 second cooldown a shaman/warrior combo can effectively make it so a caster can never cast a cast time spell whatsoever.

The one problem I see with a shaman and warrior team is that you have no way to get rid of CC except trinkets. You also may have mana issues with a shaman compared to a pally so either you need to kite a lot or somehow kill some one before the match becomes a drawn out mana race.

Warriors/Shaman are 1 minute burst teams. If they don't win in like the first minute they're not gonna win, or at least, they shouldn't win.

Warrior with MS/Flurry/Bloodlust/Death Wish/Windfury, up on a hamstring/sundered target should drop said target in seconds, if they don't drop said target, or they screw around too much their chance of losing goes up alot. Both classes are extremely vulnerable to snares. Neither class can do much to keep you from killing said Shaman, so many classes can screw over the Shaman's healing that after all the horror of Bloodlust have been taken care of there's no reason not to murder the Shaman.

I didn't feel like this warranted a new thread so I figure this was the best place to post this.

I am a protection warrior (on a pve server) and have pondered doing Arena in it's inception with obtaining the shield as the sole goal. My guild has never seen the shield drop off Gruul in months so I'm basically looking at the Illidan shield as the next pve upgrade. Thus the arena becomes my other option for an upgrade. I am looking for viable advice for 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5 for a prot warrior.

My first question is - "Am I screwed?" If the consensus is basically, "oh yes, but if you like to feel depressed at the end of every arena match by all means go ahead." If the answer is a bit more positive then I'll ask my second question...

What route should I take? Am I basically a HP sponge in my pve tank gear trying to get big shield slams and generally interrupting casters? Or should I slap on DW gear and pretend I can kill someone before they kill me? I want to actually contribute to my arena team in some way and not just suck up a spot. When I think about 2v2 I cringe thinking how absolutely a burden I must be.

I also realize respeccing twice a week to a dps then back to tanking for raids is an option. At the risk of sounding like a whiner I am hoping to avoid that. However, it's a last resort I am willing to do. Any thoughts? Thanks.

Basically you are yes.

Shield if I recall is around 1.8k, meaning you're looking at around 4-5 weeks if youu can maintain a 1.5k-1.6k rating, you'd probably be better off chain running heroic mechs and getting the Sha'Tar exalted one.

Respec.

The odd thing about the arena points rating system is that dropping below 1500 doesn't result in a massive loss of points. So you can make a team of 5 pve spec'ed players, loose all your games, and still get 'decent' points.

If your rating sinks too low you can just make a new team (which is probably much cheaper than weekly respec's).

I personally respec to MS once every two weeks. If you respec the night before maintainance, play 10 games that evening, then play another 10 the following day before the raid, you can get 2 weeks of arena games done in 1 respec.

Respec once a week and play your games, that is what I did, and probably 101% of all the prot warrs in PvE raiding guilds.

To get 100g / week on this is trivial now days, and you can even enjoy it.

It is very easy to get a pala/warr/priest 3-3 team to 2000 and get 800pts week. (this is once example that has worked for me, not the only way to get the pts).

I find 100g / week much better alternative to pvp-ing as prot and staying a low rating, and hence having to wait even longer for that shield mate.

Ok respec is the route then. Thanks for the input.

I did try prot 2v2 arena, it was painful. I ran it with a resto shaman which is probably not the best partner, and we were both specced and geared for pve. We ran into quite a few paladin/warrior teams that were simply impossible to take down since our burst is so poor.

We did beat a couple of teams that were as clueless as we were, though.

500+ resilience would be pretty hard, I'd have to check all the items with resil, but you'd probably cap out at around 400-450 and thats socketing with full +8 resil gems/enchants/ect.

lol ok, i did exagerate a little. i do know about some locks who've reached really high and s2 will only make them higher. but is stacking crit still worth it after high resilience?

S2 will only increase resilience by around 5-15.

S2 adds resilience gems to the mix.

The patch adds resilience gems, the S2 gear only adds 5-15 resilience.

My warrior alt (Dwarf, potion slave) is almost dinging 70 and i want to go do some arena's with him. He also needs to do some gearing up in instances so hence this question.

How would a 35/5/21 build do in arena's compared to the more standard builds? http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=LVMcdNioM0dbZVZcEdoh0z for example.

It would have last stand, concussion blow, some extra physical migitation but it lacks Deathwish and improved intercept.

Concussion blow seems a fun tool to use, but perhaps giving up improved intercept for it is too much.

I've been 35/5/21 for a few months now, and it's not too bad. Obviously you have less burst without deathwish, but when you come up against say a magic-based team and they decide to focus you down first, last stand is certainly nice to have. And another interrupt (conc. blow) is always useful.

It's a pretty good build that can do all things reasonably well, but I must admit with the addition of the cash income from daily quests, I'm more and more tempted to just start respecing between prot and DPS as and when needed.

Your not only missing Death Wish, enrage is missing in your specc too...thats much damage lose.

How can you honestly arena without improved intercept? Those talents are so huge its beyond words.

I tend to do Arena on a more casual basis so I don't respec just for it so I usually go for PvE specs and usually don't get imp intercept. It hurts but it's doable though it will be interesting to see how the trinket change impacts Arena play.

My warrior is in horrid gear and has a joke of a weapon (Oathkeeper, hey it was the best 2h mace choice going by top end damage), but I find that I enjoy the 35/5/21 build. Saving concussion blow for a critical moment or even right after a mace stun can put some people in a "stunlock" quite easily, and it seems on occasion its preferable to the 33/25/3 build. Being a gnome warrior with a paladin partner I have slightly less reliance on intercept though.